Toshiba seals Sellafield build deal
30 Jun 2014
Toshiba today completed its £102 million deal to acquire a 60% stake in NuGen, the company developing a nuclear new build site in Cumbria.
Under the terms of the deal, first announced last December, Toshiba acquires Iberdola’s 50% stake and a further 10% from partner GDF Suez in the project company.
Toshiba owns US reactor firm Westinghouse, and today’s news confirms NuGen’s plans to build three Westinghouse AP1000 reactors on 100ha of land to the north and west of the Sellafield site in West Cumbria, with a combined output of 3.4GW.
All reactors proposed to be used in new UK nuclear plants must undergo the four-year, £30 million Generic Deign Assessment (GDA) run by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) before being cleared for development.
Today NuGen and ONR spokesmen confirmed Westinghouse was in discussions with ONR officials
At present only EDF and Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor have cleared the process, with Hitachi’s Advanced Boiling Water reactor only staring the process in January this year.
Westinghouse began the GDA process for its AP1000 pressurised water reactor alongside EDF and Areva, but in 2011 “paused” the process following completion of the first stage, due to the lack of a suitable UK site on which to develop the reactor.
With the firm’s parent now owning a site, ONR chairman Nick Baldwin told Process Engineering earlier this month that he expected notification from Westinghouse to revive the process.
Today NuGen and ONR spokesmen confirmed Westinghouse was in discussions with ONR officials, but that the GDA process had not yet officially restarted.
Each of the three Westinghouse reactors will take approximately four years to build. The first reactor is targeted to come online in 2024 – with full commercial operation of 3.4GW targeted to be delivered by 2026.
The fuel for the reactors will be supplied by the Springfields Fuel Fabrication facility near Preston.
